Tour d'hôpital

I read the other day that the French were just declared the world's worst tourists (http://www.euronews.net/2009/07/09/french-named-as-world-s-worst-tourists/). I think I'm linking to this otherwise banal article because I occasionally feel like we have had something like the role of the tourist thrust onto us while here at the hospital. And I feel like we assume this role and wholeheartedly become tourists. Badly behaved tourists. There are, of course, no end to the similarities - most people speak to us in a foreign language and we stumble through our feeble attempts to respond to them in kind. But when we fail to make sense of each other we demand they speak to us in a language we can understand. The food often looks a little strange and suspicious. We always feel poorly dressed by way of comparison (folks around here really know how to work the scrubs). We live out of our suitcases, are perpetually lost and, in keeping with the spirit of Frenchfolk everywhere, we have yet to tip anyone.

Most exciting news: Ford is two months old! We took his NJ tube out to mark the milestone in style, to congratulate him on making it this far.

Ford was shuffled out of the NICU a few days ago as an influx of critical babies took precedence. He was moved down the hall to the PICU and we temporarily lost our private digs. But the PICU was experiencing a bit of a lull, with only a handful of babies sprinkled throughout their spacious 28 bed unit. It was certainly a calmer environment than the PICU in Edmonton, which seemed to be constantly in crisis. It was a relaxing few days with Ford staying supremely stable and relatively quiet.

There was one brief moment when his saturations dropped low and two nurses started anxiously pacing around his bed. An RT came running with the high-flow rig to hook him back up to oxygen and I had to plead a bit with them to just wait. This great doctor (Dr. Jenny, we call her) came by and sided with me to wait on him. I guess the tried and true strategy of an ICU is to intervene at the first sign of trouble rather than stand around waiting for patients to crash - it was clear that they weren't entirely comfortable doing nothing. But Dr. Jenny was pretty reassuring and stayed with us until she decided he was fine, despite what the monitor was saying, and left. One of the things that is both frightening and exciting for us is getting the chance to be with Ford without having to always know what his biometric readings are, without the alarms chiming as he regularly drifts in and out of their parameters. This was one of those moments where I was looking at him, so deeply and comfortably asleep, and he looked absolutely perfect, but the equipment was ringing off: danger, danger! Apparently when we are all in a deep sleep our oxygen saturation levels drop a few percentage points, so they were prepared to accept the episode as such, but were still hanging back waiting to pounce on him. After a while of him sitting pretty low I decided (very selfishly) to try and wake him up, which I did as gently as possible, and he almost instantly resaturated. I felt pretty vindicated and relieved, but also a little strange, a little cavalier, like what if there really had been something wrong with him and I had decided to just let it be and he'd gotten worse instead of better. Those are the sorts of situations we might get into at home with him that are the most frightening to think about.

Ford was moved upstairs to the cardiology ward this morning and we are once again in a private room. Only this time it's a deluxe private room with our own bathroom, sink, bed (for us as well as him), window, TV, Internet, etc. There is a kitchen in the hall and several other homely amenities. It's actually really amazing. We felt pretty great as we settled into our new life 'upstairs.' Ford is now officially out of intensive care and is being monitored a lot less. The nurses sit outside, down the hall, and only come by to give him his meds or if there is an alarm ringing off. We are now expected to do much more of the minute to minute care for him, which we have mostly already been doing (while we're there), with the biggest change being that they expect one of us to stay with him all night.

By way of example, shortly after he was moved in, a porter showed up and said: I'm here to take him down to x-ray.

Ok, I said, and backed away from the bed.

Who's going to carry him? Mom or Dad?

Carry him? Like, out of the bed? Downstairs?

Yes. We will unhook him.

Umm.. Ok. I'll carry him... ?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I got to carry him in my arms around the hospital with nothing but his feed pump attached. We took a long, meandering route, and he seemed to drink it all in, staring wild-eyed at all the changing scenery. And I sat alone with him in the radiology waiting room and was approached by several people cooing: Ooo, look at the baaaabyyyyy! Ooo, what a cuuuuute baby! I guess it felt so much like I had imagined it would feel like to have a two month old in tow, out in the world, and it was oddly kind of amazing.

Then, of course, he was clamped and velcroed into a barbaric looking set of restraints, with his arms pinned up around his head, and he screamed and screamed while the radiologist manipulated what looked like the cannon on the death star into position above his chest and my freewheeling revere was brought crashing back to reality.

Still, all things considered, it has been a very good day.

So this is hopefully where we will stay until discharge. I would like to put out there that we can now easily accommodate visitors in larger groups, with their kids too (who were previously not allowed in). We are eager to show him off, to have him meet friendly new faces who are not there to administer some rare and unpleasant form of torture on him, and hopefully wean the suspicious and startled expression that he so often wears off his chubby little face. It's been a while since we've coaxed a smile out of him. Give us a call/write us an email anytime, we would love to see you all.